I can confirm that Sounders FC assistant coach Brian Schmetzer has interviewed for the head coaching job at FC Dallas, something first reported by Jeff Carlisle in this story for ESPNFC.com.

The job was vacated by Schellas Hyndman, who stepped down after this season following five and a half years with the team.

Carlisle, citing sources, noted that former MLS great Guillermo Barros Schelotto is the preferred choice among the candidates — the ESPN report from Wednesday identified five — but that there has been a disagreement over compensation.

No firm deadline for a decision has been made public by FC Dallas, and Schmetzer is still believed to be in the running.

Schmetzer, 51, does have an interesting connection with FC Dallas, and it comes with technical director Fernando Clavijo. Their relationship dates to 1984 when they were teammates on the San Diego Sockers of the indoor North American Soccer League until 1988. It continued with two more indoor teams, the St. Louis Storm of the Major Indoor Soccer League (1990-91) and then with the Seattle SeaDogs of the Continental Indoor Soccer League (1995-97), where at the end Schmetzer got one of his first coaching jobs under Clavijo.

A Seattle native, Schmetzer has been Sigi Schmid’s top assistant with the Sounders since the team’s leap to MLS in 2009. He was previously the head coach of the lower-league team in the A-League and United Soccer Leagues, and he also has ties to the Sounders dating to 1980 as a player in the old NASL.

Schmetzer had interviewed for the coaching job with the Montreal Impact before they joined MLS as an expansion franchise in 2012, something he told me last year. That job eventually went to Jesse Marsch, albeit not for very long.

Schmid and Sounders general manager Adrian Hanauer have both expressed faith that Schmetzer is ready for the next step. Hanauer, in the linked story in the previous paragraph, said that Schmetzer will be “a tremendous head coach in MLS someday.”